Do Students Need Depth More Than Breadth?

As anyone in the field of education can tell you, one can argue ad nauseum about the breadth of the “ideal” curriculum. In the Progressive Era, “more” was fashionable. Courses in Bachelor Survival, Parenting, etc. were de rigueur. I was once on a television show with the Superintendent of the Denver City Schools, who boasted of having 600 electives in his school system. Conversely, in the wake of No Child Left Behind, the curriculum is in danger of being narrowly defined in order to accommodate high-stakes testing in reading and mathematics.

So the notion implied in the subtitle of the book “Learning in Depth: A simple innovation that can transform schooling” strikes me as being somewhat ingenuous. To be sure, after introducing his proposal—each student will choose one topic and study it in great depth from kindergarten through 12th grade—Kieran Egan takes us through every conceivable objection to his proposal and refutes each objection in turn. But I am less convinced than he that concentration on a single topic (he uses “apples” as an example) is equally suitable for 1st as for 12th graders (and all grades in between), or that the structural separation that divides elementary from secondary education is really compatible with the kind of continuity his proposal envisages.

On the positive side of the proposition, it is certainly a good thing for students in elementary school to know what it is to master a topic and thereby develop a sense of ownership. It is also extraordinarily beneficial to a teacher to supervise a project which requires of the teacher enhanced knowledge. In a world where it seems that the liberal arts are giving ground to a more technocratic approach to learning, such innovation would seem to be timely.

However, as an Oxbridge graduate, all my prejudices are to the contrary. The common core of knowledge, so essential to life-long learning and civic engagement, would seem to be threatened rather than enhanced by this degree of specialization so early in a student’s intellectual and social development.

I would need to visit a school, or better still a school system, where this approach is being used, to have any chance of becoming converted. Have levels of academic achievement been raised significantly as a result of this innovation? Are the attributes traditionally associated with the liberal arts – such as the capacity for critical analysis, tolerance for and appreciation of ambiguity, etc, etc. – more or less in evidence when such a project is in place? Furthermore, it is unlikely that such an approach would be equally beneficial to all students, especially given the increasingly diverse student population of contemporary America.

That said, Mr. Egan’s book is well-argued and genuinely provocative, and as such, makes a tangible contribution to the current literature on school reform.

what’s not funny here is that only about 1/3 of kids in the US receive an education with sufficient proficiency to compete for 21st century workforce jobs.

the system, even with NCLB is focused on the 1/3 who have parental advocates and have done well in k-6.

The kids who have not done as well in K-6 and cannot pay basic proficiency assessments – leave K-6 educationally crippled and basically doomed unless they get lucky.

It’s one thing to look at the problems with high school kids but it’s quite another to basically abandon kids who have problems in K-4 with the excuse that we need to provide a “well-rounded” education even if those kids don’t even get the basics.

Our focus should be on the kids in K-6 with normal or better IQs no matter their parental or economic circumstances – they can learn and they basically are innocent at that point in their lives.

We do a huge diservice not only to them but to our own kids who will grow up having to pay for the entitlements that those who do not have a competitive education will need.

This idea is a good one if not taken to such an extreme. At our local school, each child does a project each year called a Learning Goal. The child chooses a topic and investigates it as deeply as s/he can for her or his level. Teacher help is optional; parents are not supposed to help at all, and the projects are not graded. At the end of the term, students present their new knowlwedge, usually with a combination of spoken and visual techniques. Some children repeat their topics year after year, adding to their knowledge and ability to communicate it. Some choose a new topic each year. Having attended several of the presentation nights, I can tell you that these children learn their chosen topics in much greater depth than the rest of the topics they learn.